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The December flight test will send the uncrewed Orion spacecraft 3,600 miles from Earth on a two-orbit flight to test critical systems for the challenges of deep space missions.
During the 4.5-hour flight, Orion will travel farther than any crewed spacecraft has gone in more than 40 years, before reentering Earth’s atmosphere at speeds near 20,000 mph and generating temperatures up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Orion will land in the Pacific Ocean where the U.S. Navy and NASA’s Ground Systems Development and Operations Program will recover the spacecraft.
The Orion Flight Test will evaluate launch and high speed re-entry systems such as avionics, attitude control, parachutes and the heat shield. In the future, Orion will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). More powerful than any rocket ever built, SLS will be capable of sending humans to deep space destinations such as an asteroid and eventually Mars.
